152 ON BIRDS' NAMES. 



" Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow mist 

 Their halos, wavering thistledowns of light. 



The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, 

 Laughed, and the echoes, huddling in affright, 



Like Oden's hounds fled baying down the night." 



This quotation will illustrate also, how the least known 

 birds often find their way into the writings of our poets ; 

 for as I said before, poets are usually good ornithologists. 

 Taking again a bird often wrongly called " Loon," we might 

 suppose poets would have little to say of a big, strong, 

 black, hook-billed, green-e3'ed bird — ugly, if any bird can 

 be ugly ; and yet we read in Scott : 



" Fast as the cormorant could skim, 

 The swimmer plied each active limb." 



And Longfellow writes : 



" As with his wings aslant, 

 Sails the fierce cormorant, 

 Seeking some rocky haunt, 



With his prey laden ; 

 So toward the open main, 

 Beating the sea again, 

 Through the wild hurricane 

 Bore I the maiden." 



And in Paradise Lost we again meet it in a most appro- 

 priate simile : 



" Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life, 

 The middle tree, the highest there that grew, 

 Sat hke a cormorant." 



But if we begin on poets and birds we open an endless 

 theme, as varied and as beautiful as any offered by nature 

 and her best interpreters, I have shown, I hope, the im- 

 portant place birds hold in all our highest literature. And 

 as with the poet, so with the scientist, the economist, or the 

 humanitarian — good names for birds become essential to 



